Right out of the gate, Cheap Trick captured the two sides of the band perfectly on its album covers. On several of its ‘70s classics, the front cover featured glossy images of singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson in long-haired splendor. Then you’d turn the cover over and see geeked-out guitarist Rick Nielsen in flipped-up cap and bowtie with drummer Bun E. Carlos dressed in everyday white-shirt-and-tie.

“We’ve never been like corporate recording company people,” Nielsen said during a phone interview from a recent tour stop in Boston. “For someone like that, we’re the ultimate gift but the ultimate nightmare. We’re a conundrum and not everyone’s cup of tea, but if we were everybody’s favorite band I’d be worried.”

Fans of Cheap Trick’s gloss and grit will get another chance to see the Illinois group this Friday, when they play a show at Silver Legacy. The Reno show is one of several the band is playing on off-nights from performing larger venues with Aerosmith, the Boston hard rock band that are also old-school tour-mates of Cheap Trick. Nielsen said the band likes to do their own headlining gigs during tours such as this one.

“If we’ve done 10 shows, then at least five of those are our own,” he said.

Fans of Cheap Trick will get a special treat in Reno as well — more catalog selections then what folks are hearing on the Aerosmith tour.

“Some of the sets are way more extensive and deeper,” Nielsen said. “I figure if we do an hour with Aerosmith, it’s at least an hour-and-a-half or more on our own. Probably 25 songs.”

In fact, Cheap Trick has become well known for throwing in songs they haven’t played in a while instead of sticking to a rigid set night after night.

“We might make mistakes or forget a chord or two, but you know we’ve always been good at that,” Nielsen said of keeping the set lists fresh.

It was the band’s boisterous live show that helped Cheap Trick earn its first hits in 1978. After three modest sellers once the band was signed in 1975, their fourth album, “Cheap Trick at Budokan,” was recorded in Japan where the band were a top 10 act at the time. At first released only in Japan, “Budokan” began selling well as an import and was released in the U.S., where it reached the top 5 and sold three million albums.

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Cheap Trick also were embraced by discerning punk and hard rock fans in the ‘70s, even though they didn’t fit neatly into either genre. Nielsen believes that having elements of both styles helped the group out.

“We could have easily got into trouble no matter what we did,” Nielsen said. “But I think we had enough of the good qualities of a lot of different types of music that it worked. And that’s how we wrote music in the first place.

“You know, bands have these big burly tough guys with tattoos and they ride motorcycles or whatever, but when it comes down to it everyone will turn into a little pussycat. We were just realistic about that.”

The band’s power-pop vibe helped Cheap Trick’s follow-up album, 1979’s “Dream Police” also go top 10 with two top 40 hits, the title track and “Voices.” Throughout the ‘80s, the band other hits including “If You Want My Love, “Tonight It’s You” and its sole No. 1, a power ballad called “The Flame.” Continuing to tour through the next decades, Cheap Trick long since left the major label grind and is currently releasing albums on its own label.

The band has also seen few lineup changes over the years, with Nielsen and Zander still at its core. Petersson left for a chunk of the ‘80s but returned for good in 1987, while Carlos is still a member of the group but has retired from touring with the band. His replacement on tour is well known to Nielsen — it’s his own son, Daxx.

“He didn’t get the job because he’s my son,” Nielsen said. “It’s because he’s a great drummer who just happens to be my son. We thought it would be the wrong way to approach it, if he wasn’t a musician who could play well. But, you could probably say the same thing about us. So, now we all have to step it up.”

Daxx Nielsen started playing for Cheap Trick a decade ago, when his father said that he filled in during a Carlos back operation. Since then, Daxx Nielsen has been drumming for Cheap Trick and for artists such as Dick Dale, Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow. Another one of Nielsen’s children, Miles, is also a musician with his own band and gigs with artists such as singer/songwriter Cory Chisel (who will be in Tahoe later this month, opening for Norah Jones).

“(Miles) is like all of us, just a struggling musician,” his father said. “He’s working every night of the year, making music all of the time. He’s like me — too dumb to quit.”